


Wings

by ottermelons (goldkirk)



Series: Words from Stardust [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 20:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4276509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldkirk/pseuds/ottermelons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Word prompt number three: Agelast.</p>
<p>Despair is death, he told his children. That was their bedtime story, in the starless nights of the underground. The moment you give in, that's when you die and there's no going back. The underground was no place for humanity, and his children needed him to live.</p>
<p>Now, if he wanted to survive, he would have to become more than human. More than his suffering, more than his pain, more than his failures and weakness and fear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wings

_**Agelast; n.:** A person who never laughs._

* * *

 

_He never smiles_ , they whisper behind doors. _He never laughs._ _**  
** _

 

He is solemn and serious, always closed–but not uncaring in the slightest. He must feel deeply, since he's more loyal and protective of those few he connected to than any other man alive. _An enigma_ , they call him. A mystery hidden in his own smoky and carefully-labyrinthian past. **  
**

 

They don't know. **  
**

 

* * *

He used to laugh, once upon a time. He used to laugh just like others, lips cracking into a flash of dangerous white, his laughs of genuine delight sounding almost like the happy barks of a dog. Those were in his earliest days. That was before. **  
**

 

A child in the underground doesn't last long. Killed by cold, starvation, disease, most met their end before they even had a chance to fight for their own survival. Most of those who lived past that didn’t live much longer. They were often devoured (in every sense of the word) by their fellow humans, and then thrown out with the waste to die. **  
**

 

Levi? He lived. **  
**

 

He lived on his own terms or not at all, and that was probably what saved him. From day one, he made a private vow that he would not die and he would not ever be conquered or broken. And he wasn't. **  
**

 

Levi lived, and he grew--but only a little. The smallest, but the strongest, all the other children knew. He led some of them: the ones who had any single shred of life left. Anyone who still had the smallest desire to fight. **  
**

 

There were few of them; most of those in the underground were walking corpses. Living, breathing, but no longer alive. There was no soul in their hopeless eyes anymore; the number of times Levi had seen toddlers with eyes more dead than a skeleton’s wasn’t something he wanted to think aobut. When Levi walked past them, he never looked back. **  
**

 

Despair had no place in his fight to survive. **  
**

 

Despair is death, he told his children. That was their bedtime story, in the starless nights of the underground. The moment you give in, that's when you die and there's no going back. Death is a one-way street once you start down that road, no matter if your heart keeps on beating. You do not give in. You do not despair. If you give in, you die, and if you die, you leave. There is no room for useless corpses here among us, the living. **  
**

 

Sometimes, people had to be left behind. Sometimes, people had to be buried. Levi knew this, they all knew this, but it didn't make it hurt any less each time. After a while, Levi learned to acknowledge that pain and then shove it down, box it up, and hide it away so he could function at his best and do what he needed to do. Life was unforgiving, and Levi couldn't afford to grieve. The underground was no place for humanity, and his children needed him to live. **  
**

 

And so he grew older, though not much bigger. Others came and went with the years. Through death, through betrayal, through the simple parting of ways, they all seemed to him in the end. It started with his mother and went on down the line, but at least each time someone left, a new person always came in their place. **  
**

 

Isabel and Farlan, they had stayed for a while now. They didn't leave. It was the three of them, against their fates, against the world. They even moved to the upper world, within the walls, as a family. Life was getting brighter for once, and the three of them even started to fit in and maybe make some new acquaintances. But he should have known it was too good to last. They, just like everyone else, left Levi alone. He failed to protect them, and they weren't strong to survive enough on their own. Levi was in pain, in agony, just like every time he’d lost before. But for the first time in his life, Levi had the time to grieve. **  
**

 

He was safe, in the Survey Corps headquarters. He had food. He had warmth. There was no need to desperately fight for survival. There was nothing to keep him from exploring, feeling, drowning in his grief fully for the first time in his life. It ripped him to shreds and broke him to pieces, but Levi was nothing if not a survivor. He cursed fate, he cursed his life, he cursed everyone who had died, he cursed Erwin, he cursed rich filth, and most of all he cursed himself. **  
**

 

There was no warmth in the cold, cold rain, and there was no life in his hard gray eyes. Levi had been broken. Levi had despaired. The one thing he had vowed never to do, and he'd gone and done it...how quickly life could change. How quickly he could be thrown upside down and lose sight of everything he stood for. **  
**

 

He was huddled in the corner, his now-nightly roost, curled so small he could barely be seen. Wedged in between the foot of the bed and the corner between the walls of his room, the walls that closed in closed in closed in until he couldn't breathe couldn't see and he was crushed under the grief and the guilt and the hot, burning tears that wrecked his face. **  
**

 

_Maybe_ , Levi thought in the middle of all the stabbing, rending pain, maybe the brokenness that he had scorned and rejected all these years was something more. Maybe it was, in fact, more human than survival. Maybe, just maybe, he was finally feeling the full truth of what it meant to be a human, and that truth was suffering. **  
**

 

If the basic human experience was suffering, Levi didn't want it. If being human meant being weak and overcome by your pain, Levi didn't need it. From his youngest years in the gutters, he had been determined to live. It was how he was hardwired, it was who he was. Now, if he wanted to survive, he would have to become more than human. More than his suffering, more than his pain, more than his failures and weakness and fear. **  
**

 

In the ghostly light before dawn, Levi rose from his crouch on the hard floor. He pushed up and stood tall, and started to walk. He went through the room, out of his door, down through the halls, and with every step he shook himself free. He bound his humanity and put it down deep, not rejected but controlled. He couldn't turn himself into a monster. He needed to remain human, or everything he'd fought for, everything he'd done, wouldn't matter. **  
**

 

But he could be _more_. He could rise above that suffering higher than anyone had gone before, and he could use his freedom to learn from the past and help the future. If he was _more_ , he could save lives as penance for the ones he couldn’t save before. If he was _more_ , he could do better than just survive--he could live. If he was _more_ , he could begin to repay the debt of his sins. **  
**

 

He would be more. He was going to survive. And not just survive, but live--and maybe, one day, fly.

**Someday, he might earn the wings that graced his back. Until then, he was going to fight.  
**


End file.
